


more seats reserved for heroes

by opensummer



Series: dear forgiveness, [2]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: (sort of), Blanket Permission, Cultural Differences, Gen, Genius Kara Danvers, Kara Danvers Arrived On Earth On Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-12 08:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17463671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opensummer/pseuds/opensummer
Summary: Clark didn’t ask for this, ok?He never does.(Wherein Kara Zor-El is nine years late, not twenty five and it makes all the difference in the world.)





	more seats reserved for heroes

**Author's Note:**

> title from [litany in which certain things are crossed out ](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48158/litany-in-which-certain-things-are-crossed-out) which incidentally is where the 'verse name came from.

"Kara?" Clark asks to the kitchen, where his cousin is slumped over the table. "I heard you come in." It's past two in the morning, and the night had been still until Clark heard the air displacement of a person hitting jet speed, the _whuff_ of dirt kicked up by her landing, the singing of grass blades against each other as she had cut across the yard. He been awake before her arrival trying to come up with an excuse that would get him on the football team without the permission slip the school required.

"Yes." She say tiredly. She looks awful to his vision when he can make himself focus on a normal spectrum, seeing not through her to the molecules that make up her being, the structure of her bones and the rush of blood through her body, but the surface level, all dark circles under the eyes and greasy hair. Clark wasn't even aware Kara could look like that. 

"Do you really want to be human Kal?" She asks in Kryptonian.

"My name is Clark." In English, because he’s never liked the way he stumbles over the syllables, never liked the way Kara looks when he messes up the grammar- half disappointed, half devastated, all the resentment of his fifteen years of hiding welling up. "And yes more than anything."

"There's a way." She says sitting up and pulling a box out of her bag, slung carelessly on the back of her chair. The box is lead lined and obscured to his vision. "If you choose."

"Why didn't you do this earlier? I could have been normal and you wouldn't let me?" 

(This is an accusation. It hurts more than Kara thought possible.)

“I didn’t have the materials to manufacture it before now.” She says quietly. “And then it was a prototype. It needed testing before I could let you use it.”

That startles him away from the box.

"It will make you less Kal." Kara says quietly, insistently. "It will suppress you down to a strong human, but it will stunt the growth of your powers. If you wear it you will never be as strong or as fast or as smart as you could have been."

"But I could be human. Touch things without breaking them, touch people without hurting them." He says. “Play football.” Like it’s an afterthought when they both know it’s not. 

"Yes." Kara says, defeated. "You could."

She pushes the box to him and says, "You'll need a few days to adjust to it, Kal. Put it on now and go to bed. I'll be here when you wake."

He opens the box and finds a slim metal band, inset with a geometric pattern in green stone. On the inside of it, he finds the shield of the house of El scratched into the metal. He puts it on. 

"You'll want to bend the bracelet closed around your wrist." Kara says and as he crushes the bracelet closed, "The metal is from your pod. After a day you won't be able to remove it without my help."

"I want this." He says, daring her to snatch the bracelet back, fly to Metropolis, pretend this conversation never happened. She wants to, _Rao_ , how she wants to.

"That is your right." Kara says formally. "Now go to bed Kal. You'll need the sleep."

She waits in the kitchen, listening to the house settling, the creak of the floorboards, the soft clatter of the shutters, Martha and Jonathan's deep even breaths, and the steady thrum of their hearts. She listens to Kal-El's heartbeat slowing to a human pace, then slower still as he falls asleep. Kara waits in the kitchen until false dawn, until Kal is deeply asleep and then she slips out of the kitchen, to the barn and jumps to the roof. She finds Krypton in the stars above, searches out Rao's red light and cries for the first time in years, huge wrenching sobs that wrack her body.

She's failed Kal again, and in doing so she's failed her family, her planet, her god. 

Truly, the last child of Krypton now.

* * *

 

When the sun begins to rise she greets it with a prayer and goes to collect the eggs from the coop, let the cows out of the barn.

She’s got coffee brewing and bacon frying by the time Jonathan stumps down the stairs to start the day, Martha not too far behind him. “It’ll be a minute for the coffee.” She says. “I already did the morning chores.”

“I didn’t know you’d come home.”

“I got in late last night.” 

“We weren’t certain you’d come back.” 

“I wasn’t either.” She says and pours him a mug of coffee. “We need to talk about Clark.”

Fighting words in this household.

* * *

Clark sleeps until ten, only waking when Martha pokes her head in to see if he wants breakfast.

He rolls out of bed ten minutes later, baffled by the lack of sound invading his ears and promptly stubs his toes. _It hurts_. 

And he remembers the conversation, the bracelet, and crows with delight.

Clark Kent throws himself down the stairs, shouting for Kara and nearly breaks his neck when he trips and stumbles. There's no sound as Kara appears, no motion that catches his eyes, just falling and then she's there and he's cradled in her arms.

"Kara! I didn't even see you move!" 

"You wouldn't have." She says, face grave, lips turned down into a frown. "I already explained things to your parents. You're excused from chores for the rest of the week."

"Grab some breakfast," She says putting him down carefully. "and then you and I will go for a walk. Be careful.”

Despite her warnings Clark has tripped twice and burned himself once before he's done eating.

"You're adjusting to gravity." She says over breakfast, "You'll be clumsy for a bit, and will have to readjust your physical expectations. It's a good thing Martha and Jonathan raised you human, you'll have an easier time getting used to it than I did." 

"You tried it?"

"I wasn't going to give you anything like this without testing it."

"Don't you want your own?"

"No."

She catches him when he falls and he falls often that day, wobbling along as clumsy as a newborn deer.

Over a dinner that's unexpectedly tense he tells his parents all about the day, about being human and what it's like to not be drowning in his senses.

"It's amazing!" He gushes and his parents exchange a look over his head and Pa says pointedly, "Your cousin doesn't think so."

"No.” Kara says tightly “I don’t. But I respect Clark's right to choose. He has decided he wants to be human."

"But you don't want that do you?" 

"I will not assimilate because you are afraid." Kara says tightly. "May I be excused Martha?"

"Yes Kara." And hissed to her husband in an undertone that Clark has to strain to catch but knows that Kara can hear clear as a bell, "Leave it Jonathan."

He realizes after, that this was the first time Kara had ever called him Clark. 

* * *

The second day, Kara doesn’t need to keep him upright until he tries running, and she catches him easily enough. They roam the whole length of Smallville, end to end and back again, letting Clark stretch his legs.

“Tomorrow we’ll try catch.” She says, when they get back to the Kent farm, and lets him go ahead. She listens to him run up the stairs, stumble and bang his knee. 

She could have caught him, in the moment between the slip and the fall. Instead she stands outside the Kent farm, turns her face to the sun and breathes.

There’s a bank robbery happening in Kansas City right now. It’s just gone five and the sun is high in the sky. The robbers put a gun to the head of the man who was supposed to be locking the doors for close. She could stop them, but it’s daylight and something Jonathan Kent had to say must have stuck because Kara is too afraid of exposure to move. 

Kal-El is blissfully unaware and she despises herself for that.

* * *

On the third day, she wakes early and speeds through the chores. She enlisted Martha yesterday and side by side they put together a picnic basket.

They drive to the sprawling park on the outskirts of town, spread the blanket on the banks of the river. 

Clark throws a football for Jonathan, practices catching, all awkward angles, suddenly a lanky teenager after years of grace. He’s laughing. 

Martha and Kara take a lap around the park arm in arm, keeping an eye out for stray balls. They’re not the only family to have this idea today and a pickup game forms around the Kent men.

* * *

The fourth day is Sunday and Kara lies awake in her bed until Martha knocks on her door and asks the same question she’s asked every Sunday Kara’s been home, since she came to live with them. “Do you want to come to church this week?”

“I’m going to pack.” She says and hopes that will be the end of it.

Martha pauses at the door before she says, “Do you mind if I come in?”

“No.”

Martha lets herself in and looks around. 

When Kara left for college, she cleaned out her clothes and posters but left her jewelry box, the white framed mirror Jonathan had made for her,  a painting of Argo’s cityscape, ephemera from the four years she occupied the room. Those are gone now. The only evidence of an occupant is the bright quilt spread across the bed and the boxes that litter the floor.

“You’re not planning on coming back.” Martha says, unsurprised.

“Not for a while.” Kara admits, sitting up and crossing her legs. She pats the bed, invites Martha to sit. “He doesn’t need my trauma.” 

“You know that you are always welcome here.”

“I know.” She says. “But I’m not needed.”

Martha lets that settle inside her, swallows her hurt. “No.” She says, “But you were a child. Children shouldn’t be _needed_.”

“Not on this planet, at least.” Kara says, tired. This is an argument they have had before. Neither of them will change their minds. 

Martha nods, leans over, hugs her. “You’ll say goodbye this time.”

“Yes.”

“Then come have breakfast with us before you go.”

* * *

It’s bacon and eggs, a carafe of coffee Kara helps herself to liberally. After, Martha and Jonathan go to change into their Sunday best and she pulls Kal aside.

“You’re leaving.” He says.

“Yes.” 

He throws himself into her arms and holds on, longer than a boy of fourteen really should. “Thank you.” He says when he lets go.

“Don’t thank me for that, Kal. I’m still not certain it’s the right choice.”

“It is for me.”

She closes her eyes, breathes before nodding. “And that is your choice. I’m just a shout away if you need me. Now go get changed. You’ll late to church if you don’t move quick.”

She helps them out the door, and waves to them from the front porch until the truck is beyond even her sight. Then she goes upstairs, gathers her boxes, and breaks the sound barrier flying home. 

**Author's Note:**

> This has been mostly written for ages but the latest chapter of [history's longest suicide note](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17176340/) has been giving me fits, so I took a look at this guy and finished it up.
> 
> If you like this, come say hi on [dreamwidth](https://opensummer.dreamwidth.org/)


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